Launching Our Quality

Launch’s Dr. Meghan Roe and Mrs. Linda Ayres work to ensure that Launch creates high quality virtual courses.

With two official Quality Matters-certified reviewers on the team and two nationally recognized courses in our catalog, Launch is proud to build and offer courses that meet the design standards of Quality Matters.

At Launch, we never really say we are finished with a course,” says Coordinator of Course Development Dr. Meghan Roe. “We are always open to finding ways to make our courses even better. After they’re built, we revisit them and review them to see how they can be approved upon.”

Meghan works with Quality Assurance Specialist Linda Ayres and a team of digital developers to make sure the Launch team creates top-notch quality courses for all Missouri students, and as of early 2019, we have two official marks to prove it. Launch received its first nationally recognized Quality Matters Certification Mark for meeting course design standards in an Official Quality Matters (QM) peer review in February 2019, and a second mark was quick to follow.

Quality Matters, an internationally recognized, faculty-centered peer review process that certifies the quality of online courses, has recognized Launch’s commitment to quality assurance for designing both Personal Finance and Health courses that meet Quality Matters standards. “We want to ensure that we are offering students high quality courses, and we believe in the mission of Quality Matters,” Linda says. “It only made sense that we partner with them to make our courses better.”

Quality Matters has developed a widely respected set of standards for the design of effective online courses and a rigorous faculty peer review process for applying these standards to existing courses. Through this process, reviewers provide instructors and instructional design teams with insight and recommendations that increase learner engagement, retention and satisfaction, and, ultimately, learner achievement. Both Meghan and Linda are official QM-certified reviewers, which also helps bring knowledge to the Launch development team and—in the long run—makes Launch courses even better. In addition, all Launch development team members will be QM-certified reviewers by the end of quarter 1.

“We are proud of the quality of our courses, and we were happy for the review team from Quality Matters to agree with us,” says Meghan. “The process was both positive and collaborative, and we look forward to submitting more courses this year for review.” Up next for QM certification are Launch’s Film as Literature I and Astronomy courses. “Our partnership shows that we are serious about the quality of our courses,” Linda says. “We are always striving to make our courses better. We want them to be the best they can possibly be.”